


Write Error

by mogwai_do



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Dark, Episode: s03e13 Last of the Time Lords, F/M, Introspection, Mental Disintegration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-05
Updated: 2013-01-05
Packaged: 2017-11-23 18:46:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/625410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mogwai_do/pseuds/mogwai_do
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lucy Saxon had it all, whether she wanted it or not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Write Error

He's rewriting her, bit by bit and line by line. She remembers her programming course at university, the iterations of coding until she finally got what she wanted; it feels just like that. She'd thought it was her technical ability and her ambition that had attracted him to her out of all the other pretty heiresses at Cambridge. She knows better now; he was never attracted to her at all. Still isn't, if she's honest with herself, but he fakes it well, she'll give him that.

They’d dated for weeks before they’d first had sex; she'd thought it was chivalry and a certain amount of romanticism that she’d never admit to occasionally liking. Now she knows it was actually a complete lack of interest in her sexually, combined with ensuring she was his, first and foremost. 

It had been the most mind-blowing sex of her life and she meant it literally. He had been inside her, but he'd also been _inside_ her. He couldn't hide it from her when they fucked, or he didn't bother, she wasn't entirely sure which. She'd known him then, at least little: his brilliance and his madness; his alienness and his frighteningly comprehensible motivations; his obsession and his weakness.

He'd left the bed afterwards, left her, mind-blown and weak, sprawled on expensive silks. She'd watched him dress, fastidious and neat as always, but he'd barely glanced at her. When he left the room she'd struggled to pull herself together, tried to fit his existence into her forever altered worldview. She told herself to run, but it was already far too late and she cried when she realised it always had been. She could never leave him; he was something fantastic and strange and alien and beautiful and she loved him.

Outside of the bedroom he was attentive, charming, Human. He had the world eating out of his hand and she had marvelled at his skill, his power. The ambitions she’d fostered at university had been all but realised in the most horrific way.

The second time he'd fucked her had been their wedding night. She'd been more aware of it then, or maybe it just wasn't such a surprise. She'd been able to feel him in her mind and memories, and she'd realised then that it wasn't deliberate. He wasn't even with her, at least in his own head. She couldn't see into the darkness that was his mind; maybe it was that women’s intuition she’d always derided, but she knew without a doubt that he was thinking of someone else as he thrust into her.

By the time he became Prime Minister she had become so attuned to him that it didn’t even need the sex, a mere touch and some integral part of her was just gone, rewritten and replaced by something alien. Sometimes it was a big thing: when the Torchwood woman had screamed, it had terrified her, but she hadn't been able to tear her eyes from his obvious delight in her death. Sometimes it was a small thing: she'd hated jelly babies ever since her childhood when an older cousin had eaten one in front of her, starting with its feet and making tiny screaming noises with each bite. But he offered her one absently and she took it and wondered if it screamed briefly as she bit off its head. It wasn't that he was careless with her; it was just that he didn't care. He was a Time Lord, she knew that now, and her tiny Human brain stood no chance against the force of his desire. His fantasy was bleeding over into her, remaking her into something, someone, else entirely.

She was losing herself piece by piece until she wasn’t sure if there were anything left of the woman she had once been. She didn't see herself in the mirror anymore; sometimes she saw a broken woman, who couldn't leave despite everything he was doing to her, but sometimes she saw something else, something of what his unshielded want was making her into, something dark and beautiful, but still irretrievably broken.

The day she first saw the Doctor she felt it: recognition. She was a broken creature of want and whimsy now, something delicate and prickly, but she would never be old enough, alien enough for her husband. She saw it all in the Doctor though: the want that he thought he hid; the whimsy that was alternately both charming and dangerous; the fragility of recent pain and the sharp defensiveness that came from living so long alone.

The Master had rewritten her without even trying, line by line, replaced her Human coding with another, knowing, but not caring, that it could only ever be chicken scratches next to the native language he loved.

So she watched events unfold on the Valiant, thankful for once that her broken code let her see that something far more vital and immediate and important than the mere fate of Humanity was at stake. They thought she'd finally snapped, that the Master's abuse (though neglect would be a better term, because he hadn't cared enough to abuse her) had broken her mind and they were half right. He had made her a straw effigy of a creature he wanted more than he would ever admit. She was an imperfect echo of his fantasy, warped and twisted and almost unrecognisable from the original, but some things remained true. He’d given her the ruthlessness to rule the world at his side, but he’d also given her the ability to sacrifice herself. 

The Doctor’s plan was madness of a different sort, the Master knew it and the Doctor would never admit it, but she understood: it would tie them together and tear them apart and the universe would go with them. For the sake of so many, for their sakes if not her own, she had pulled the trigger, because they both knew the Doctor never would.

And as she watched him bleed out, she wondered if he might love her at last for doing what the Doctor couldn’t, but she watched him die in the Doctor's arms without even sparing her a glance and she hated him. Yet as she watched the tears roll down the Doctor's face and felt the wetness on her own, she found she still loved him too because in this one thing he'd rewritten her right.

FIN


End file.
